1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a digital image system, and more particularly, to a method and device for packing a plurality of digital images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital images may be captured by digital cameras and saved on memory cards. In addition to dedicated cameras, digital cameras are present in various types of devices, such as, for example, mobile phones, tablets, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other portable communication devices. With the technological advancements in digital cameras and memory cards, users are capturing large amounts of images and/or videos. Further, User Generated Content (UGC) websites have enabled users to upload their images, or other visual contents, for sharing with other users. The captured images may also be stored in the memory device of a camera or a computer, or may be uploaded to a remote location and viewed on electronic displays. Most of the time, captured images are not repurposed beyond individual image prints. In addition, with the amount of digital visual content available to users, a large amount of visual contents must be efficiently displayed in a limited space and time.
To efficiently display a large amount of visual content in a limited space and time, panorama views may be formed or collages may be created.
A user can share, edit, organize, manage and enhance the captured images through the use of image editors, and other software tools, to form panorama views or to create collages. Collages are created by combining several images on a single canvas, and may be created for special events such as, for example, a holiday, a wedding, or an anniversary.
The creation of a collage includes the essential step of packing/arranging the images on a canvas in an artistic manner. The simplest method of arranging digital images, or other visual content, in a limited space is to manually pack the visual content in the allocated space in an artistic manner.
Current digital imaging technologies enable automated packing of images of a consistent size, which may be provided from the same source. A group of digital images are selected, which are distributed in a predesigned pattern, to form an image collage. The image collage can be a stand-alone digital image. Some automated packing techniques focus on collecting images having the same size and aspect ratio. The automated packing techniques are limited when images are collected from different sources or when images are captured using cameras having different orientations, i.e., images may have a portrait orientation (where the height of the image is greater than the width of the image) or they may have a landscape orientation (where the width of the image is greater than the height of the image). Further, other packing techniques force significant portions of images to be cropped or obscured for effective packing of the images. Furthermore, some packing techniques overlap or rotate individual images to optimize packing.